Thomas's Deals Have Made the Knicks More Interesting
By HOWARD BECK

Published: December 21, 2004


G. Paul Burnett/The New York Times
Isiah Thomas took over as Knicks president on Dec. 22, 2003, when the team was 10-18. A year later, the Knicks are 13-11 and leading the Atlantic Division.


it was not long ago that the Knicks were measured by an unflattering scale, one that weighed millions of dollars spent against losses endured. It was their own personal misery index.

And miserable they were.

Fans watched in anguish as the payroll climbed and the product declined, and by the time Isiah Thomas's flight touched down in New York last December, the misery index had spiked, zooming to hopelessness.

The Knicks were 10-18. Their payroll was $88 million.

A year ago Sunday, Steve Mills, the president of Madison Square Garden, called Thomas, a Hall of Fame guard. Three days later, Thomas was introduced as the new team president.

Everything since has been a blur, a tornado of trades and dollar signs and headlines, all tied together by one smiling man assuring everyone that better days are ahead.

Tomorrow is one year since Thomas became the Knicks' overseer. He will not grade his first year, but by most objective measures, it has been a modest success.

The Knicks are 13-11 and leading the Atlantic Division, despite a roster largely thrown together over the course of eight months and despite only a cameo appearance by Allan Houston.

There are stars on the court - Stephon Marbury and Jamal Crawford joining Houston - and stars along the baselines and sideline. And if the payroll is swelling, to $103 million, well, so are expectations and satisfaction in the Garden boardroom.

"He's clearly moving us in the right direction," Mills, now the president of MSG Sports, said of Thomas. "They clearly are a younger team than the day he walked in the door. Clearly we're a more athletic team than the day he walked in the door. We have a team you can look at and see there's a future to build around."

This universally rosy view can be heard in the corridors of the Knicks offices, although it is not necessarily shared across the league, or even across Manhattan. His critics say that Thomas's whirlwind of activity has not made the Knicks better, just more interesting and more expensive.

"My feeling is, they're still in the mud of mediocrity," George Karl, a former longtime N.B.A. coach and a commentator for ESPN, said. "This is a team that on certain nights is pretty good. On other nights it looks like they can't play. And they go up and down. And the highest you could expect from them would maybe be a first-round win.

"I don't see an upside to the talent level of their team. Could they get by a first-round opponent? If they get the right team, the right matchup. They're not strong enough or consistent enough to be a factor in the playoffs. I would point the arrow up, but bringing this much change to a team and then constantly talking about more change, it's tiring."

So the criticism goes. Some fans echo it. Thomas hears it. He just doesn't understand it.

Since Thomas took the reins last Dec. 22, the Knicks have gone 42-36. They are not only more competitive, but they are infinitely more watchable, as television ratings attest. In the 73 games shown by the MSG Network, Fox Sports New York and the Metro Channel since Thomas took over, the average ratings have soared by 40 percent, to a 1.72. The 73 games before his arrival averaged a 1.23.

Yet Thomas still hears the carping: that the Knicks are going nowhere, that they are just barely over .500 in a weak division, that they are still loaded down with overpaid players.

"I will say to this line of questioning, to whoever those people are: What don't you like that we're doing?" Thomas said. "Because we're younger, we're more athletic, we sit here with a first-round pick, we've got expiring contracts coming up next summer and I believe we're first in our division right now."

He added: "We've been doing all this without Allan Houston, who when I got here was the best player on our roster. And he got taken away."

Houston's troublesome knees were among the many handicaps Thomas inherited when he took the job, replacing Scott Layden, who was fired as general manager. The payroll was already bloated, and the roster was littered with average players earning All-Star salaries.



Questionable contracts are still on the books, but the Knicks have more victories to show for the dollars spent. And they have a young core - Marbury, Crawford, Mike Sweetney and Trevor Ariza - that should keep the Knicks in the playoffs for years to come.

The winning atmosphere, in turn, could help the Knicks in the free-agent market.

"He's making the Knicks relevant again; that attracts players," said the agent Mark Bartlestein, who does not have a client on the Knicks' roster. "It's not easy to do. The salary cap can put the handcuffs on you."

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Despite those constraints, Thomas has been aggressive in the free-agent and trade markets. He pursued Rasheed Wallace last season and Kobe Bryant during the summer, and he worked furiously to acquire Vince Carter before Toronto traded him to the Nets last week.

"I know this: He has a tremendous lust for winning," Bartlestein said. "My guess is he'll have the Knicks competing for the Eastern Conference championship in the near future."

Relevance and excitement in the big city comes at a high cost.

The Knicks' payroll is by far the highest in the league, and nearly double that of the defending champion Detroit Pistons, whose payroll is $52 million. Among the league's other elite teams, the Minnesota Timberwolves have a payroll of $69 million and the San Antonio Spurs are at $45 million.

Of course, the bloated payroll was not Thomas's invention. When he arrived, the payroll already stood at $88 million, more than double the salary cap.

Although Thomas is criticized for acquiring players with bad contracts, he has merely swapped old bad contracts for new ones.

Since becoming Knicks president, Thomas has unloaded Howard Eisley (due $26.5 million at the time), Shandon Anderson ($24 million), Keith Van Horn ($27 million) and Clarence Weatherspoon ($17.6 million). All were considered overpaid, and all had contracts that were difficult to trade. (Anderson's was bought out.)

Thomas added roughly an equal number of millions: he obtained Marbury, Penny Hardaway and Tim Thomas, and acquired Crawford in a sign-and-trade deal. But that is how the N.B.A.'s trading rules generally work. And the new players, on the whole, are considerably more talented than the ones they replaced.

The most criticized trade was the one that sent away Van Horn and Michael Doleac in a three-team deal, with the Knicks receiving Tim Thomas and Nazr Mohammed. Critics said the Knicks made a mistake acquiring Thomas, an underachiever making $12.9 million this season, and for giving up Van Horn, one of the best 3-point shooters in the league.

"Van Horn is a guy you have to guard," a Western Conference general manager said. "You would never say, 'You have to stop Nazr Mohammed and Tim Thomas to win this game.' "

The same general manager said the Knicks made a mistake in acquiring Marbury and Hardaway from the Phoenix Suns. The two are owed a combined $130 million, and the deal cost the Knicks two first-round draft picks and some young prospects, Maciej Lampe and Milos Vujanic.

"The deals that were made in a basketball sense weren't very good," the general manager said. "That's the general consensus from everybody."

Yet Marbury has been a steady leader playing in his hometown; he is averaging team highs of 20.1 points and 8.7 assists this season. And Mohammed, though lightly regarded in his first six N.B.A. seasons, has become indispensable. He has started all 24 games and is averaging 11.9 points and 9 rebounds. He ranks third in the league with 3.6 offensive rebounds a game.

"If we didn't have him, who are those people we would have right now?" Isiah Thomas said.

Thomas said that trading Van Horn was tough, but given that the Knicks' starting center was Dikembe Mutombo, acquiring Mohammed was a move "we had to do."

Looking back now, he said, "I wouldn't have done anything differently."

If there is another blockbuster deal ahead, Thomas won't say. He says he is happy with the Knicks as they are - a guard-dominated team in a conference that has only two teams with dominant big men: Miami, with Shaquille O'Neal, and Indiana, with Jermaine O'Neal.

The Knicks could also use a great big man, but they are hard to come by. The Knicks used their best chips, expiring contracts, to acquire Marbury and Crawford. They refuse to part with those two players, and it is unlikely any team will want the burdensome deals of Houston (owed $57 million over three years), Hardaway ($30 million over two years) or Jerome Williams ($18 million over three years).

But the Knicks could have flexibility soon enough. The contracts of Hardaway, Mohammed, Tim Thomas, Moochie Norris and Vin Baker all expire after next season. They will all become commodities, and trading chips, at the end of this season.

"I like our team right now; I'm not looking to move or do anything," Thomas said. "When I got here, we had to do a lot of things to get to where we are now. And people said it would take us five, six years to get to where we are now. But we got fortunate, we got lucky. As I sit here today, we have assets, we have draft picks, we've got young players and we're playing pretty good basketball."


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I love the fact that the big knocks come from Karl, who's first major move as GM was to give Tim Thomas a huge contract.

this article is on the main page.................